Listen Now: Blame it on the Fame: Milli Vanilli

Dave Grohl's memoir The Storyteller offers a deeply personal account of the Foo Fighters frontman's musical journey—from his suburban upbringing to his induction into the storied grunge scene with Nirvana to the challenges of carving out a new path after Kurt Cobain's death. The first half traces Grohl's evolution from an impassioned punk kid banging on pillows to a drumming prodigy joining seminal bands like Scream and Nirvana.

The second half explores how Grohl rebuilt himself artistically after Cobain's tragic passing, eventually seizing creative control with Foo Fighters. Amid band struggles and musical reinvention, Grohl reveals how he found personal fulfillment in parenthood and family. With candid introspection, Grohl paints a stirring portrait of an artist reconciling his life's wildest aspirations with life's inevitable curves.

Acid for the Children by Flea, bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, takes readers on a gripping journey through his unconventional childhood and early musical influences. From his nature-drenched upbringing in Australia to his immersion in the gritty punk scene of Hollywood and avant-garde music circles, Flea's story highlights how his diverse experiences profoundly shaped him as a musician.

The memoir delves into Flea's battle with addiction and the unbreakable bonds he forged with friends and bandmates like Hillel Slovak and Anthony Kiedis. It charts the serendipitous formation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Flea's pivotal role in crafting their distinctive funk rock sound. Woven throughout is Flea's foray into acting sparked by Penelope Spheeris, who kickstarted his exploration of storytelling through film.

In 1976, an Irish schoolboy nicknamed “Bono” answered a call to join a new band. Ten years later, that band—U2—was a global sensation. As U2’s singer, Bono leveraged his fame to become a voice for activist groups fighting poverty, hunger, and the AIDS epidemic. At the same time, he started a family while pushing U2 to explore new styles of music. Bono’s memoir, Surrender, tells the story of his life and U2’s success, while also discussing Bono’s Christian faith and how his childhood affected who he’d become.

In this guide, we’ll cover U2’s rise to stardom, their period of self-reinvention, and Bono's career as a political activist. We’ll also provide historical context for Bono’s early days, the music industry, and U2’s shifting critical reception. We’ll look at the pros and cons of celebrity activism, as well as how Bono’s thoughts on Christian faith compare with those of contemporary religious writers.

Dave Grohl's memoir The Storyteller offers a deeply personal account of the Foo Fighters frontman's musical journey—from his suburban upbringing to his induction into the storied grunge scene with Nirvana to the challenges of carving out a new path after Kurt Cobain's death. The first half traces Grohl's evolution from an impassioned punk kid banging on pillows to a drumming prodigy joining seminal bands like Scream and Nirvana.

The second half explores how Grohl rebuilt himself artistically after Cobain's tragic passing, eventually seizing creative control with Foo Fighters. Amid band struggles and musical reinvention, Grohl reveals how he found personal fulfillment in parenthood and family. With candid introspection, Grohl paints a stirring portrait of an artist reconciling his life's wildest aspirations with life's inevitable curves.

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson discusses the psychology of humiliation, the use of shame as punishment, and what happens to the targets of public shaming after the crusade is over and everyone forgets about them.

Initially, Ronson thought that public shaming was a force for good. Underdogs and average citizens can hold powerful people and corporations accountable and put enough pressure on them that they’re forced to change for the better. However, as Ronson learned more, he discovered that public shaming can also be a destructive force that ruins people’s lives, even if those people haven’t actually done anything wrong.

Since her first hit song, Britney Spears has been a pop music icon. She’s won MTV Awards and a Grammy, millions of fans have attended her concerts, and she’s become one of the all-time best-selling musicians. However, behind the scenes, Spears has lived a life of turmoil, emotional trauma, and never-ending scrutiny in the public eye. When she bent under the strain of that pressure, Spears’s father took control of her life while exploiting her for financial gain.

The Woman in Me is Spears’s memoir of her career and private life, from the joy she’s found to the trauma she’s endured. In this guide, we’ll follow the story of Spears’s life from her small-town childhood to her struggles with stardom and the 13-year conservatorship that severely restricted her freedom. We’ll also explore the media’s portrayal of Spears throughout her career, the music industry’s treatment of women, and expert views on family dysfunction.

Merchants of doubt are people or organizations who discredit science that threatens their agenda or ideology. The first merchants of doubt were members of the tobacco industry—when scientists discovered that smoking caused cancer, that was bad for businesses. It was also bad for capitalism in general because it suggested that the market wasn’t self-regulating, and lack of regulation was killing people. Other defenders of the free market started using the tobacco industry’s techniques, such as funding new (and hopefully more favorable) studies or calling for balanced media coverage.

In Merchants of Doubt, science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway study the doubt-mongering techniques used in several other important “debates”—nuclear disarmament, acid rain, the ozone layer, climate change, and the pesticide DDT. These techniques are still in use today.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Catch Predators is journalist Ronan Farrow’s memoir of his experiences uncovering one of Hollywood’s biggest scandals—the decades of sexual abuse and assault by entertainment industry power broker Harvey Weinstein. Farrow overcame surveillance, intimidation, blackmail, and even the resistance of his employers at NBC to break this story. He and the women who came forward to share their experiences exposed how Weinstein was able to use his power, wealth, and influence to intimidate and silence his victims, and how the media and legal systems allowed him to operate with impunity for decades.

Psychologist Maria Konnikova claims that con artists have existed for as long as human communities have. Con artists are people with an uncanny ability to gain someone’s trust, swindle them, and disappear before the victim even grasps what’s happened—a ruse known as a confidence game, or “con.”

In The Confidence Game, Konnikova uses social psychology to reveal the inner workings of cons: What makes a good con artist, and what makes a person an easy target, or “mark”? Through her analysis of common human biases, Konnikova demonstrates that a con artist doesn’t just rely on their own wiles—they rely on our instinctive confidence in the stories we tell ourselves. Konnikova suggests that by understanding these manipulation tactics, we might learn to identify and extract ourselves from cons. In this guide, we’ll also include actionable advice for avoiding cons and explore how the manipulation tactics apply in more recent examples.

In Blood on Their Hands, Mandy Matney and Carolyn Murnick deliver a gripping account of a multi-year investigation into the Murdaugh family's alleged involvement in a web of corruption, deceit, and suspicious deaths in South Carolina. The authors navigate personal and professional challenges while uncovering potential systemic injustices in the legal system that allowed the prominent family to wield significant influence.

Matney and Murnick give voice to the victims and their loved ones, chronicling their relentless quest for justice and transparency. The book sheds light on the complexities of ethical journalism in pursuit of hidden truths—an empathetic yet resolute narrative of uncovering uncomfortable realities.